Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) webinar series: NERC EDS

Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) Webinar Series - Overview

Starting in February 2026, we launched a series of webinars to showcase the digital research infrastructure projects and communities in the UK and beyond in collaboration with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Join us to learn about state-of-the-art initiatives that aim to advance research tools and techniques, foster collaboration and data sharing, and accelerate discoveries across a range of academic disciplines and sectors. And if you work on a research infrastructure project and are interested in being a guest speaker, please email us at info@dcc.ac.uk!

Digital Research Infrastructure Webinar Series: Getting to know the NERC EDS

Wednesday 8 July 2026

Join us to learn about the Natural Environment Research Council’s (NERC) Environmental Data Service (EDS), a trusted UK facility providing data stewardship to ensure environmental data of long-term value are findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). 

This webinar will introduce the NERC EDS and showcase key services that support data management, standardisation, and discovery, including: 

• The Data Stewardship Wizard, an open-source platform designed by stakeholder requirements, supporting collaborative data management planning 
• The NERC Vocabulary Server (NVS), a plethora of standardised vocabularies to enhance data interoperability and reuse 
• The NERC Data Catalogue, an integrated search across EDS data holdings providing access to data 

The session will also highlight NERC EDS work on making environmental data AI-ready, featuring insights from the High5 for AI and FRAME-FM projects. 

About our guest speakers

Patrick Bell is the EDS Integration and Engagement Lead and has 30 years’ experience from his core role at BGS with responsibility for delivering science driven information systems to enable the innovative exploitation of the UK’s environmental knowledgebase by all stakeholders. Delivery mechanisms include APIs, data web services, mobile apps, data portals and ecommerce systems, as well as data capture, collection, ingestion and management facilities. Patrick has led the delivery of award-winning systems such as OpenGeoscience and the UK Soil Observatory. Patrick undertakes roles in national and international collaborative informatics projects through initiatives such as the EDS, Government Digital Services Geospatial and the EPOS European Research Infrastructure for solid earth science. 

Danielle (Dani) Wright has 11 years’ experience as a Data Manager at the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) and is co-chair of the Vocabulary Management Group and a member of the UK Big Picture Group. She is involved in all areas of vocabulary content management and governance, notably within the Argo, OceanGliders and marine imagery communities, working to enable alignment and interoperability between communities and data types. She has previous experience in geophysical data acquisition and management, and for a short time was involved with the Seabed2030 project team as project Coordinator.  

Steve Donegan originally trained as a geologist and undertook a PhD in 1999 looking at Remote Sensing of Active Volcanoes with the Open University. In 2003 Steve started work with the then NERC Earth Observation Data Centre (NEODC) at RAL and has worked supporting the UK EO community.  In his time at NEODC, and now CEDA, Steve has concentrated on supporting various EO datasets and users and is currently manages the UK STFC Sentinel/Copernicus Data Hub Relay on behalf of ESA.  The Data Hub Relay (DHR) is the primary single source for ESA Sentinel data in the UK and see's many tens of petabytes of traffic each year.  During his time at CEDA Steve has also supported the NERC Metadata gateway which has been continually developed and is now the NERC Data Catalogue Service.  In his time at CEDA Steve was also on the team involved with the generation and publication of CEDA Discovery level metadata.

Matt Nichols is a Data Steward – Technical Specialist in the Digital Research group at UKCEH Lancaster. After completing a PhD in Palaeoceanography at NOC Southampton, he joined UKCEH six years ago and now leads the technical development of data management and governance tools for the Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC) and the UKCEH Data Stewardship Team. His work includes delivery of the Data Stewardship Wizard for UKCEH and the NERC Environmental Data Service (EDS), alongside the development of data citation and file-checking tools to support FAIR and reusable environmental data. He also contributes to data science and integration projects focused on improving the accessibility and long-term usability of environmental datasets.   

Ag Stephens is a technical leader within the CEDA Team who has worked across all parts of the environmental data chain from discovery, extraction, processing, delivery and analysis. Ag recently completed a part-time Masters in AI and played a coordinating role in recent EDS projects focused on “AI-ready” data and Machine Learning for environmental scientists. His previous experience includes delivery of the UK Climate Projections User Interface and data delivery services (hosted on JASMIN), co-leading the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) Compute Working Team and building robust web services to deliver climate simulations to the Copernicus Climate Data Store.

Agenda (all times BST)

• 14:00 - 14:05 Introduction and housekeeping
• 14:05 - 14:45 Introduction to the DRI and its services
• 14:45 - 14:55 Q&A
• 14:55 - 15:00 Close

This free webinar is open to all. Please reserve a ticket to receive joining information. The session will be recorded.

How to book

Register your place for the DRI webinar via our Eventbrite webpage.

Book your place now!